


Discarded To-Dos

by Miazaz



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Relationship, episode 80 tag, quick mentions of Vax'leth and Perc'ahlia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9428936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miazaz/pseuds/Miazaz
Summary: Episode 80 tagPercy, Keyleth, and a discussion of forgiveness. He really is proud of her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this immediately after episode 80, and even though Percy telling Keyleth he was proud of her added 15 years to my life, I really needed something a little heartier from my brotp.

She doesn’t flinch at the sound of footsteps - even that distance, this soft, she knows they’re safe, knows their owner.

“I can leave,” Percy says, stepping closer. “But it is my experience you are not a person who enjoys that.”

“How did you know where I was?” 

“Oh, you left an absolutely ghastly trail through the halls. Regret and self-recrimination as far as you can see. Utterly dreadful. Stained the tower, I think.”

When she buries her face in her arms, and draws her shoulders up, denying him the chuckle she knows he was trying to coax from her, she feels him shift in the hall.

His body is warm against her side, arm heavy over her back. She bites her lip.

“I told you that lists were trouble, my dear,” he murmurs, pulling her up against his chest.

“I got them killed.” Her voice is a small thing, heavy and dark, sinking into the floor as it falls from her mouth.

“Well, in all fairness, we can blame Vax for that, if it helps.” Percy’s voice sounds like he’s smiling, that little drawl ruin in the posh enunciation that doesn’t allow a looseness in the corners.

Keyleth nearly catches him with her antlers with the snap of her head up to him.

“He was only -- Percy?”

Percy’s face looks different, in a way that causes her heart to plummet from her throat and collapse against the back of her spine. “Percy…?”

He sighs, reaches between them to take her hands and thread the fingers of his right hand in hers, blanketing them both in his left.

“I know,” he says and something black settles in her lungs as sure as a plume of burnt powder, creeping up her throat to settle acrid on her tongue.

He squeezes her hands in his and leans forward to press their foreheads together. Even with the barrier of her circlet, her skin burns, unpleasant and raw, skinned and shock-bare under the weight of this face of her friend pressed to her.

She holds her breath against the chill of the memory of Sarenrae’s half-renovated temple, the empty space she carried with her where the spectre of Orthax, through Anna Ripley, shot through Percy’s heart.

Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III waits at the threshold of the library where Keyleth discarded her mantle and only Percy of Vox Machina, her Percy, pulls back from her skin to meet her eyes. He feels as frail against her as her convictions seem and a pain blossoms across her bones as her heart breaks for the both of them.

She sees the weight of Cassandra on his jaw where it clenches, the guilt of the champion’s tomb in the shadow of his eyes and the gleam of necrotic magic. She closes her eyes, Percy’s face is too much, even here, for this.

“Forgiveness,” he starts, quiet, but more steady than she could manage, she feels it wedging under her psyche, filling the cracks under her feet. “Is more painful than anything. Stronger… Stronger, better people forgive.”

His hold on their hands loosens and she shakes hers free to collapse into his chest, fingers tight in the backseam of his coat collar. His arms cross behind her back, a hand firm to her shoulderblades.

“You carry it with you. You carry their grief so they don’t have to. That’s what forgiveness is.” He rubs her back, pulls away to look down at her face. “I have none of that to give you, because I have no grievances. None of us do.”

He kisses her forehead, gives her another tight hug, and takes a deep breath through his nose in the way he does when an idea strikes him.

“Well, perhaps not  _ none _ . I can think of a pair of siblings who are probably quite cross we are not in our rooms where we ought be so they can surprise us, as though we expected them anywhere else.” 

That makes her chuckle, though it’s strangled through the lump in her throat and the dryness in her mouth. 

“Ah, there, that’s better now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she says, and when he smiles and it reaches his eyes and she feels her mouth follow suite, unbidden and true, she thinks maybe she can believe it.


End file.
